Our Dead Dads
The concept of Our Dead Dads was born through the daily discussions of seven men who share bonds of blood, friendship and all having lost their fathers. Nick Gaylord, the show’s host, shares his life experiences with his deceased father while exploring the complications and realities of that relationship. Life is intense, grief and loss come in many forms, and no parent-child relationship is black and white, which is why this show touches on all shades of grey.
Join Nick for candid conversations with his three brothers and three of his lifelong friends, along with other special guests who discuss their experiences with loss, grief, laughter, and moving forward. Nothing is off-limits here. Nick learned after his father's passing that he couldn't process what he was going through alone and sought the help of a therapist, who helped him to let go of his anger toward his father. Looking back, he realized just how many people are being crushed under the weight of grief, loss, and in some cases, anger.
Nick's mission through Our Dead Dads is to offer a platform for anyone who needs or wants to tell their story, to have that opportunity. He also hopes to reach many more who need to talk but don't know how to start the conversation, hopeful that by listening to these stories, they will be able to start talking with someone.
Nick has always sought to help others and to make everyone around him laugh. Along with his brothers and friends, he has frequently used humor to get through the hardest times in their lives, and hopefully, you will permit yourself to do the same. Get ready for an emotional deep dive. Nick has a lot to say and so do his guests. He's here for you and ready to help. Everyone has been through trauma, grief, and loss. Now, along with Nick and his guests, everyone will get through it together.
Nick is changing the world one damaged soul at a time. Welcome to Our Dead Dads.
Our Dead Dads
024 - Art, Emotion, and Family Bonds on the Path to Healing with Jason Tuttle
Have you ever faced a challenge so profound it reshaped your entire existence? Join us on a heartfelt journey as we sit down with Jason Tuttle, who opens up about his emotional path through the loss of his beloved son, Zachary. With remarkable courage, Jason shares the inspiration behind his touching new project, "Letters to Zachary," a coloring book designed to help parents and children converse about grief in a gentle and meaningful way. Throughout our conversation, Jason emphasizes the importance of creating safe spaces for discussing difficult emotions and how storytelling within the grief community has been a powerful tool in his healing process.
As we continue, Jason walks us through the complexities of parenting children with significant disabilities, tackling medical challenges with resilience and love. Through his family's story, we gain insight into conditions like Eagle Barrett syndrome and the daily realities faced by families navigating similar paths. Jason's account of raising his children, Zachary and Samantha, is a testament to the unwavering dedication and strength required when life takes unexpected turns, and how his family's bond grew stronger in the face of adversity.
Our episode with Jason also highlights the transformative power of community and shared experiences in grief. By connecting with others through platforms like podcasts and social media, Jason discovered solace and purpose, encouraging listeners to share their stories and break the stigma surrounding loss. Through initiatives like "Letters to Zachary," Jason shows how artistic projects can offer healing and connection, creating lasting legacies for loved ones passed. Whether through a heartfelt coloring book or the warmth of a supportive community, Jason’s journey is a reminder that no one has to navigate grief alone.
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Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Tuttlepatriarch
Website: www.letterstozachary.com
Email: letterstozachary2022@gmail.com
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Hello and welcome to Our Dead Dads, the podcast where we are normalizing, talking about grief, trauma loss and moving forward. I'm your host, my name is Nick Gaylord, and if this is your first time joining me, welcome to the show. If you're one of my regular listeners, welcome back. For everybody listening, thank you so much for the support and thank you for making this show part of your day. The best ways to support the show are to continue listening, sending in your feedback on the show's pages on Facebook, Instagram, tiktok and coming soon to YouTube, and you can find all of those pages by searching for me by username, and I am at OurDeadDadsPod. Most importantly, please spread the word about the show. Everybody deals with grief. We are all in this together and the best thing that any of us can do is to support each other through that grief. Follow Our Dead Dads podcast on your favorite listening platform, give us a five-star review and, by the way, if you don't know how to leave a five-star review, go to the homepage of OurDeadDadscom, scroll down and it'll show you step by step. I really hope that you enjoyed last week's conversation with James Bracken IV.
Speaker 1:This is episode 24, and today I'm welcoming back somebody who has already been featured on the show, but I haven't released his full interview until today. My guest is Jason Tuttle and you may remember him from back in August we did a Facebook Live with Tanya Manley, who was a mutual friend of ours, then ended up releasing that conversation as a bonus episode. Well, today Jason returns to the show for his full interview to talk about all of the work he has done in and for the grief community. But, most important, he is here to talk about his brand new book titled Letters to Zachary. It is a 76 page coloring book which was a massive collaboration project with so many others in the grief community and was released in honor and in memory of Jason's son, zachary. Jason is going to talk all about Letters to Zachary, how the book came to be, and he's going to talk about his two beautiful children, zachary and his younger daughter, samantha. Once you're done listening to this episode, if you're interested in purchasing a copy of Letters to Zachary, you can go to OurDeadDadscom. Go to the Recommended tab, select Books, and you will find a direct link to buy the book. Please know that this interview was recorded before the book went on sale and in order to make it easier to find the book online, go directly to OurDeadDadscom and click the link in the recommended book section.
Speaker 1:Before we get started, I would like to thank you again for listening, for your feedback and for engaging with the show. Please don't forget to follow the show's social media pages on Facebook, instagram, tiktok and again coming soon to YouTube. As you know, my goal is to normalize talking about grief, loss and trauma, which are topics that are not easy for most of us to talk about, but they're also topics that everybody should be discussing more Not only discussing them, but not feeling like they're taboo topics. Time may not heal all wounds, but keeping everything bottled up inside doesn't heal any of them. Together, we are building a community for others to have a safe space to talk about their stories and feelings, and for anybody who may not yet be ready to talk, just to listen to others and know that no one is alone on this path. That is why I say we are a community and I'm so happy to have you here. If you have a story of grief and loss to share and might want to be considered as a future guest on Our Dead Dads, go to OurDeadDadscom. Go to the Contact Us link and then select Be a Guest, fill out the form, send it in and you just might be able to tell your story and carry on this mission of helping ourselves and helping so many others. And now it's time to start the show and talk to Jason. Please enjoy this episode and stick around for the end when I'll tell you about next week's episode.
Speaker 1:Our Dead Dads podcast is sponsored by Kim Gaylord Travel. If you can dream up the vacation whether a getaway for you and your other half, a family trip or a trip for a large group she will help you plan it. If you've never used or even thought about using a travel agent for your trips, you really should. Kim will help you plan everything the flights, hotels, transportation, excursions, all the places to visit and all the sights to see. You'll get a detailed itinerary of everything and if anything goes wrong during your trip, you have someone to contact. Whether you're looking for a customized European vacation, a relaxing stay at an all-inclusive resort, an Alaskan adventure, a Caribbean cruise, kim will work with you to make sure you have a seamless travel experience. Contact her today and plan your next trip with a peace of mind that only working with a travel agent can offer, and as a special bonus for our listeners mention Our Dead Dads podcast for a 10% discount on planning fees. You can find Kim Gaylord Travel on Facebook, instagram and LinkedIn, or email Kim directly. Her email address is kim at kimgaylordtravelcom.
Speaker 1:Our Dead Dads podcast is sponsored by Dotted Avenue Creative Studio.
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Speaker 2:Avenue Creative Studio is the first, last and only company you'll ever need for website design. Jason, good morning, good morning. Sorry, it took me a second to get in here In my little grief community. I got kind of blindsided with some information 10 minutes ago.
Speaker 1:Oh no, what happened?
Speaker 2:When I first got into the whole podcasting arena, if you will, I got into one of the podcasting groups. I think that's where we connected. I may have gone to your website.
Speaker 1:I'm pretty sure it was one of the Facebook groups.
Speaker 2:And so 90, probably 5% of the podcasts I've done had been through some of these Facebook groups, just because so many people post in there. And so the first woman I ever did a podcast with she has been phenomenal helping me out, just because she's got a wealth of knowledge and a wealth of connections and so just someone that we had all been connected with, I found out as of this morning she's not connected with them anymore and given vague details and I'm just like you know, I'm not trying to be nosy by any stretch of the imagination, but I've just said, you know, if you need someone to talk to, I said I'm not one of those people that runs off and kind of runs my mouth.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And so I said but I was just like I'm, you know I'm sorry to hear that because I know both of them I was just like I wish all both the best. It's not my place, and all that fun stuff.
Speaker 1:Not the way you wanted to start this morning.
Speaker 2:Well, with the way my personal life has been going this summer since school let out, it just goes with the territory.
Speaker 1:Right, well, let's see if I don't know how much better this morning is going to be, because it's not exactly like we're going to be talking about sports and fun topics.
Speaker 2:Oh no, I, you know, I've, I have talked, it's been long enough and I've talked about it enough to where you know it. You know I don't necessarily get choked up about it, unlike you know, say, the first six months to a year, right.
Speaker 1:Well, let's see how far into this discussion we can go. Let's see. You know, obviously we're not going to talk about anything that you're not comfortable talking about, and I know that you have talked about this to a lot of folks and I appreciate you so much taking the time to tell your story to me and to my audience, and hopefully we can get some more awareness of what exactly it is that you're doing, what you've gone through as a dad, as a dad who has lost a child. There's a lot to unpack here, so let's dive into it if you're ready.
Speaker 2:Sure and honestly, nothing's off limits. I will talk about anything.
Speaker 1:Perfect. Well, I appreciate that and, again, I appreciate you taking your time. I'm honored to have you here and let's see how this goes. I'm going to ask you to go ahead and start telling your story wherever you're comfortable with. I know that you do have two children and you have lost one of them. You were a stay at home dad for 12 years, I believe. Yes, and it was during that time when you lost your son, correct? So go ahead and give us a little bit start early, give us a little bit of context, and the floor is yours.
Speaker 2:Okay, I'm a married father of two children that have a multitude of physical and cognitive disabilities. This year will mark 21 years married to my wife. We met in 2001,. Got married 2003. My wife, being from the New England States, a cradle Catholic, wanted a large family. In fact, her first response to me when we got to talking about it was I'd like to have four kids. And you can imagine my initial response was let's have one and then we'll talk. I mean, see where it goes. You know I wasn't opposed to it because you know, up until things that happened in life for us, you know, we I was thinking I was going to have kind of that nuclear family excuse me where it was, you know the mother, the three kids, the white picket fence, that kind of thing. So to add one more to it wouldn't have been a stretch per se, sure, but I think it was just more of a surprise that she came right out guns blazing with that comment.
Speaker 1:I want four kids, let's do this, yeah and so.
Speaker 2:So we got married in 2003, about a year into our marriage, because I married my wife when I was 26. She was 29. So by the time we finally decided to have kids she was right at 30. And, as any family knows, especially women, once women kind of hit their 30s, the medical complications start increasing. The medical complications start increasing. And so her comment to me was you know, if we're going to have kids, let's start doing it now. I want to have whatever we're going to have by this age. And I said, you know, okay. And so we started right about a year and it didn't take us long to get pregnant. And, you know, everything was kosher up until about that week 20 appointment. And at that point which, for those that don't know, the week 20 appointments, that one where you find out the sex of the child you know you're beyond the first trimester and once you get into that second trimester, all of kind of the initial complications that might have been that first one are kind of gone. So it's okay to kind of find out the sex of the child and some of the other issues. And so we went into that week 20 appointment and she did not want to know the sex of the child. I did more so for the fact that I'm a planner. I was making the nursery and I, just, I, honestly, just I didn't want to do neutral colors and I want to cater it to whatever. The sex of the child was Right. And she didn't want to know because, like a lot of women, it's well, this is the last great mystery that we have. I'd rather find out when the child's born. You know that kind of sentiment, understandable, yes. And so we playfully went back and forth in that appointment and so finally the ultrasound tech got to that point. She said I'm about, to the point of finding out the sex of the child. Do you want to know? And we playfully went back and forth and before we could answer, she goes well, I need to know the sex of the child because I've found an issue. And we go okay, what's the sex of the child? And she said well, you're having a boy. And we say can you tell us what the issue is? And she says no, that's more of a doctor relayed message. And so we then go well, why did you need to know this sex of the child? And she looks at us and says well, if it's what I think it is. She said it's rare in boys and even rarer in girls, and we went well, okay, then From that point forward, from week 20, all the way up until my wife gave birth at week 38, we were seeing a perinatologist, which is, in the simplistic terms, is kind of a high-risk OBGYN is what a perinatologist is, for those that don't know.
Speaker 2:And through those next like 18 weeks, every time we would go we would get every doom and gloom scenario of things that they think might be going on. You know, your son's going to be born with one kidney, which he was, of that one kidney. Your son's going to have some damage in utero because fluid's backing up into it, which happened. Your son's going to have areas of missing white matter in his brain, which happened At one point they thought he was going to have hydrocephalus, which is water on the brain, and they typically do surgeries to put shunts in your brain to kind of drain that excess fluid off, which thankfully that never happened. And they gave a lot of other scenarios that with this, as you can imagine, a reasonably younger couple having their first child and we're getting hit with all these different kinds of medical issues.
Speaker 1:They're not giving you a lot of hope at this point.
Speaker 2:Not really. I mean they're saying, with all things considered, they feel like that he would be born healthy per se but he would have the medical complications. So it wasn't like they felt like he was going to be born stillbirth or you know, or anything of that nature. So you know, we get through 38 weeks. You know, the fun part was the day that my wife went into labor. I had to drive from where I was through five o'clock traffic to get to the hospital. So that was a fun experience. We got in there. In fact she got to a point where she was having contractions so fast that had slowed down. Now understand that. My wife is five foot two at the time was about 150, 160 pounds when she was pregnant. My son at birth was nine pounds 14 ounces. He was big. In fact he she was literally all baby when he was born in the hospital. When the other nurses would see him we would get oh you, you're the ones with the big baby.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he was big. Now, fortunately my wife just because of her size, we automatically went into a C-section, there was no way. And so we had the C-section, he was wrapped up, we saw him for about 30 seconds and then they took him up to the NICU at the hospital that we were at. Of course, you know, my wife had to go to recovery just because of, you know, the having a C-section and the epidural kind of made her nauseous, which is pretty common. And I immediately went up to the NICU after that and you know, I walked in there and the doctor came up to me and said you know, I'm Dr So-and-soso. Your son was born with a rare condition called Eagle Barrett syndrome. And I went and what's that? And he told me what it was and he said what's going to happen is, you know, we're going to watch him overnight, and then the local children's hospital on the North side of Atlanta is going to have their transport team come down, they're going to pick them up and he's going to go up to their hospital to be, you know, observed. And at that point we didn't know how long. And so I looked at him and I said, okay, I said, but my wife has yet to see her son and I said y'all aren't leaving this hospital without her at least seeing her son for a few minutes before they take them up. I said, for the most basic sense, I'm not going to live the rest of my life having to live that down because my wife didn't see her son. And so you know the doctor laughed and he was just like that's fine, they'll bring him up to the room. And so they brought him up to the room and kind of their incubator transport thing that they have, and you know I have pictures of her putting her hand through the hole, you know, holding his hand, that kind of thing, and you know they took them off.
Speaker 2:Well, these days, when it comes to like C-sections, typically they give women about three days to recover. It's a pretty quick turnaround time. And in fact when we, right after she'd gotten to the room and she was kind of recovering, the nurse came in or maybe the doctor came in and said we're going to let you recover for about 18 hours and after about 18 hours you're going to get up and start walking. And I looked at him and I said now I understand, I'm pretty straightforward. And I went. You just gutted my wife like a deer in a field dressing, and I said and now you're wanting her to get up and walk, make laps around the hallway around here? I said explain the logic. And he goes. Well, what we've learned is the more you agitate the system at when you're in the recovery process, the faster it will start recovering is one of the reasons why, other than the fact that you know, the longer a person lays after surgery, the higher the risk for like blood clots and that kind of stuff, and so that's why we get them up. And I said okay, I understand. So again, they give them about three days. Well, my wife, because our son was up on the north side, and so I give her all the credit for that. So we get up to the hospital on the north side of Atlanta and he's there for what turns out to be about 11 or 12 days as they observe him.
Speaker 2:And it's at that point I can remember about the middle of that week I went up there it was a Wednesday, and I'm sitting up there, my parents are up there with me and the head nurse comes over to me and I'm just sitting here, kind of I've got my like elbows on the crib, I'm looking at my son and she's talking in my left ear just telling me all these different scenarios of things. And, man, it hits me like a Mack truck. I mean I just lose it just because I'm just. You know, I'm a new father, I'm newly married and I've got this child. That's got I don't know how many medical issues at this point, but what I do know is the ones that we have found out are pretty serious issues.
Speaker 2:And so I just start bawling because I just it's finally to the point. It's just so much I just I can't hold it in anymore. And so I recover from that. And you know, my parents take me down to the cafeteria and we're eating, and right in the middle of lunch it just hits me like a Mack truck again. And so, you know, at that point we're in the NICU, we're getting to the point where we're going to get discharged and from that point forward we were given a urologist, a neurologist, a neurological surgeon, a pulmonologist and I forget the name of the specialty for a kidney doctor. We had one of those. We left the hospital with five specialist recommendations at that point. That's kind of how we started our life as just a young married couple with a child.
Speaker 1:Not the way that any parents dream of starting parenthood.
Speaker 2:No, by no stretch of the imagination.
Speaker 1:Okay. So how did his condition progress, improve or get worse?
Speaker 2:Well, eagle Barrett syndrome, which is also affectionately known as prune belly, is a rare condition. Still, it's one in 40,000 births. At this point, or at least it was last time I looked it up, the easiest way to describe it because it can get very detailed is they don't know the official cause of it. They do know it's related to a kidney related issue which he did have, but they don't know the official, kind of like origin point of it. They don't know what starts it all. So, eagle Barrett syndrome the main characteristic of it is, whereas you and I have the core like abdominal muscle, he was born with none of it, like he had no abdominal muscle, no front, no side, obliques, nothing.
Speaker 1:No core.
Speaker 2:I could lay him on the ground and the only thing between the outside world and his organs were the skin and the white fascia that holds the skin together. And that was it like, like I could lay him on the ground flat and I could literally with my finger from the outside point and touch his large intestine, his small intestine, his stomach, his I mean, all those organs down there I could literally from the outside touch. And so now he did have the layer of back muscle on him, so he did have that for support, but he didn't have that core middle muscle there. The reason why it's called prune belly is because he didn't have any muscle there. It wrinkles up kind of like the outside of a prune is what it looks like. So that was the main part.
Speaker 2:The other main characteristic is was he was born with an abnormally large bladder that didn't get the sensation, at least in the first five years of his life, to go to the bathroom and it would back up. So what I would have to do was, at least for the first several years, was every four hours I would have to give him a catheter and drain his bladder so he could go to the bathroom Now, outside of just the mounting pressure of that being painful. The reason why you'd want to do it is because in urine you have sediment and what causes urinary tract infection is that sediment just sitting there, and so he was also susceptible to urinary tract infections if I couldn't get the urine out. So that was the biggest reason as to why I had to do that was just so he wouldn't be constantly getting urinary tract infections. On the other hand, on the backside I had to do that was just so he wouldn't be constantly getting urinary tract infections. On the other hand, on the backside I had to give Miralax every day because without having that core pressure, like we have to be able to get the backside out.
Speaker 2:If I didn't give Miralax to kind of loosen things up, he would literally get impacted because he just couldn't get it out and so I would have to do that. Because he just couldn't get it out and so I would have to do that. Other issues related to Eagle Barrett syndrome which are kind of secondary issues are he had a normal lung capacity but like breathing rate, he had kind of a shallower breath. So when cold and flu season would come around, like when you and I get like a respiratory related like a pneumonia, a flu, a bronchitis, that kind of thing. Because we have our core abdominal muscles, we've got kind of that foundation that we can kind of build pressure on to be able to cough the crud out. Well, he didn't have that.
Speaker 2:So later on down the road, when I started getting the machinery in my house, if I didn't catch it fast enough I would immediately have to go in kind of my medical protocol and I would have to use a vest machine that would basically blow, that would fast blow up and and release like it would beat on his chest to loosen the mucus up. I would then have to get a machine called an encephalator that would blow air kind of hard and fast into his esophagus and immediately suction it out where it would pull it up. And then I would have to get a suction machine that was a tube that I'd have to stick down his throat to suction it out. And then after that I would have to get a nebulizer which most parents know what that is and give him a breathing treatment to kind of keep it at bay. If I didn't catch it fast enough, almost like clockwork, I'd take him up to the ER. They would do all their testing and he would ultimately get admitted every time I went to the hospital.
Speaker 2:So for the first five years, six years of his life, he was literally admitted every six months. It got to a point to where he just didn't go to a normal like third floor room. He went to one of the ICUs every time he got admitted because the ICUs had all the machinery he needed. And I got to a point in one of the ICUs that he was there so much that when I would walk in they go, hey Zacharyary, how's it going? And I'd look at the nurse and I'd say you know, I appreciate that you remember him, but I don't know if I'm happy that he's in here so much that you remember him. And so that was kind of the routine for his Eagle Barrett syndrome. So the kidney issue, the bladder issue, the stomach issue and the lung issue were all related to his Eagle Barrett syndrome. Now the other issues he had had no connection, no affiliation with the Eagle Barrett syndrome. He just had those on top of it.
Speaker 2:So on top of the rare condition he had neurological delays. So when he passed away, even though he was 15, chronologically he functioned about four to six years old. He was epileptic. So of the six different kinds of seizures, he had two different kinds of seizures that I've seen in my house. He was nonverbal and even though he was wheelchair bound, like I could hold him up under his arms and he could walk with me, but he couldn't necessarily walk by himself, and like I could put him on the floor and he could army crawl anywhere but like to stand up and walk no, he couldn't walk.
Speaker 2:So that was all of his conditions that we found out about in the first probably two or three years of his life. We were constantly in and out of the hospital. We had six specialists that we had to see once every six months. So I was constantly driving up to the north side of Atlanta to go to a specialist doctor's appointments and all of those things. Now this and even though that's a lot for him, his sister we found out about six months after she was born. She had the exact identical issues as him, except for she didn't have the rare condition. So in the first two years of two, two and a half years of marriage, I had two kids with medical issues identical medical issues, and I had, you know, six or seven specialists that I was seeing every six months and you know it was just. It was a lot to take in that first, probably two, two and a half years.
Speaker 1:How much younger is your daughter?
Speaker 2:She was two years, almost to the day, okay.
Speaker 1:Where do you even begin with this? I mean, this had to take a toll on both of you in every way imaginable, on personally, on your marriage and everything it had to be a tremendous impact.
Speaker 2:It was. However, I'm the product of my parents, who have now been married 56 or 57 years. She's the product of parents have been married. It's not as much. I think it's like 54 years maybe. So, honestly, when we got married, I literally looked at her one of the days before. She didn't know I was going to propose at that time, but one of the days before I was going to propose I said look, I'm only doing this once. I don't believe in what society thinks. The marriage is going bad, We'll just give up on it. I'm just. I'm not a proponent of that. I said once You're not getting a receipt.
Speaker 1:There's no return policy, any of that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've got enough for one woman. One time you were hit. I've got enough for one woman. One time you were hit and saying I mean, thankfully she was of the same mindset and you know when all this started happening it? Yeah, we had our time of being upset about it and this is not the life that we were meant to have or what we thought we were meant to have. You know, this sucks. This is not fair. All you know all those sentiments. But after that, the irony of it all is before my actual grief, we had kind of a grieving period of what we thought we were going to have versus what we were actually going to have as a family and as a life. And I'll be honest, I dealt with anger issues about it for a very long time afterwards just because of just being kind of blindsided in the beginning with everything.
Speaker 2:And the statistic right now is a family that has one special needs child born into the family. The divorce rate is like 75%. It's ridiculously high and I always tell people I go, well, that's for one child. I have two. I said so. If one is 75, it's got to be like 90 or almost a hundred percent if you've got two, and you know we were one of those.
Speaker 2:I'll use one of those old statements. You know we were one of those kind of pull yourself up by your bootstraps kind of people and we're just like, well, we've had our grieving period, we'd have our time. Now we've got to get into. What are we going to do? Who are we going to contact? You know what am I going to research to help, you know, give them the best quality of life that I can. Right, like any married couple in any situation. Sure, we had our ups and downs and our disagreements, but ultimately we got through all of them and you know we're not, like I said, 21 years this year. At this point we just we muscled through it, if you will.
Speaker 1:You're right, every couple goes through their shit and problems are going to come up, no matter what, whether it's financial problems, fundamental disagreements between a couple and, of course, in your situation, as you said, not one but two children that are special needs. So, again, with most situations, one child is going to put a strain on anything. You guys had double that and yet, 21 years later, here you are on the other side of it. So congratulations to you both for being so strong for each other and for your family.
Speaker 2:Well, and I always laugh because you know, over the years I've gotten people. I have always had a hard time taking compliments. It's just kind of in my DNA and you know, I get people that say, well, you're so strong or you're inspirational, and I go first of all, the strength is my children dealing with their issues. I don't have to deal with it, they have to deal with that on a daily basis. I said, but I may not take the word strength, I just say it's more the fact that I'm stubborn as hell and I'm ornery as hell, and so that's more or less what's gotten me through a lot of these difficult challenges. I'm just not willing to give up. That's what it comes down to.
Speaker 1:So you said your son was 15 when he passed he was. Was it specifically related to his condition? Was there something else that happened?
Speaker 2:The official reason on the death certificate was not anything like he was dealing with. However, after everything happened, the coroner decided that he wasn't going to do an autopsy and he was going to, if I remember the wording right, relate it to one of his many medical needs is what he was going to, although that's not what the official reason on the death certificate was okay, are you able to say what the official reason was?
Speaker 2:oh yeah it was sepsis and cardiac arrest due to the due to sepsis is what happened, without getting in, because I mean it it's a lot leading up to it and the day of and that kind of thing and we can talk about it if you like, but ultimately what had happened was, apparently he got an infection somewhere in his system, it got into his bloodstream and, like I asked the ER doc, after everything had happened and he was pronounced that kind of thing, I said is there any way you can kind of tell me an origin point of this Cause? I said I'm, I have a lot of medical knowledge that relates to his issues. I said, but I'm just I'm puzzled as to how this would happen. And I mean she was very nice, she goes honestly, no, at this point she said there's about a hundred different places I could rattle off right now where I think it could come from, based on the symptoms. But there's no way and she was comforting, at least in the moment to say she said understand that even when a patient gets sepsis in the hospital, if we don't catch it fast enough and it should get into their bloodstream, which is most likely what happened to your son the fatality rate of it is ridiculously high. She said it's like 95 plus percent.
Speaker 2:So the fact that I was able to get cause, like I'm where I am, versus the children's hospital, I'm 65 miles South of there and I mean that sounds like a lot. But in the city of Atlanta, miles south of there and I mean that sounds like a lot, but in the city of atlanta, 65 miles is nothing. And you know I would drive up there all the time. And she said, with the fact that he was still, even though maybe shallowly, he was still kind of aware when he got in here, I mean that's kind of a testament to you getting them up here, driving that kind of distance to get up here. Now, unfortunately, the end result was not great, but you know. So, yeah, it was sepsis and cardiac arrest due to the sepsis.
Speaker 1:I do want to dive a lot into what you and your wife went through after your son passed, but before that I would like to ask how is your daughter doing at this point?
Speaker 2:that I would like to ask how is your daughter doing at this point? The day that he passed, he'd been sick for two days before, maybe 30 hours-ish he had what we thought was like a 24-hour bug, which later turned out that's not what it was at all. But so I was a stay-at-home parent at the time, and the first day I kept him home. I just, you know, I texted his teacher because they were they're both in a self-contained classroom for special ed and I texted her and said hey, zachary's not feeling well. I don't know what it is. I said I don't think it's contagious, but I don't want to send them to school in a self-contained classroom with other medically fragile children and give it to them. I'm going to keep them home. And so they. They've always been great, sure, great, you know, we'll see him tomorrow. And so, after he had kind of a rough night the next night, and then that next morning, which was a, which was a Friday I texted her again, said hey, he's still not feeling well. I think I'm going to keep him home. At least I've got the weekend for him to recover. He should be back on Monday. Great, wonderful.
Speaker 2:Well, that morning I let my son sleep in a little bit longer because I was keeping him home, got my daughter ready and going. She went to school. Now my daughter has severe developmental delays so as of that morning all she knew was that her brother wasn't going to school with her because he wasn't feeling well. Happened many times before. So we got her on the bus, got her to school. About an hour later I got my son up and that's when everything kind of started to unravel and everything happened. So I got my son up about 8.30. I left the house about 9. I got to the hospital at 9.30. He was pronounced at 10.30. It was that fast. In fact, from the moment in which we realized he was kind of sick till he passed was only about 36 hours, which sounds like a lot, but in reality 36 hours is quick as it relates to just illness and what happened as it relates to just illness and what happened.
Speaker 1:So it was 36 hours for that last illness, but it was really only a period of about two hours from the time you woke him up and realize that things were really starting to go South to the point of getting to the hospital. Yes, and when he ultimately passed.
Speaker 2:Yes, and so you know when everything happened. You know, understandably, I had a moment for a minute and then I kind of composed myself and then I had to call his mother, who was working at home at the time, and I'll never forget the sound she made when I told her, when she thought he was just going up there. He'd be admitted, we'd be there about a week, which is the standard. We'd come home and I had to call her to tell her that her son, who she thought was just had a 24 hour bug, was dead on a table. And then I had. Then I called my mother, his grandparents, cause they watched him a lot when he was younger and I'll never forget the sound they made when I told them. And so, like when I talked to his mother, like her parents live, like both of our sets of parents live reasonably close to us and I said you don't need to drive, call your parents, have them bring you up. And so that's what she did. He passed at 10 34 that morning we were at the hospital in that cause they gave us time. They said you know you can have this room and you can't necessarily have it all day, but we're not in a rush for it. We were probably up there until 1230-ish just sitting with them in there.
Speaker 2:We left the hospital, my wife came home with me, that kind of thing, wife came home with me, that kind of thing. And you know, at that point it was about one o'clock and we went to my parents and, like, my whole family was there, just because, like for us, everybody was just a shock that everything had happened. And so we met with my entire family and, you know, understandably, I got in there and I saw my eldest brother and I just broke down. Understandably, I got in there and I saw my eldest brother and I just broke down. You know, I just I couldn't even get words out. And so we were there up until about the time we had to get home and my daughter came home. And so my daughter, even though she had severe developmental delays, she always knew that I took my son, I stayed with him the whole time he was in the hospital and when he was discharged I came home. So, like in all of his days in the hospital, I was at the hospital every day, but like two days, just because there was one stretch we had, that was a really long stretch and I finally called his mother up and said can you please come up here? I've got such bad cabin fever I'm about to go crazy. And so, but other than those two days, I was there every day with them.
Speaker 2:And so when she got in and she got home even though she may not have understood, like, like what I did she had this look of well, where's? She called her brother Bubba Cause that was the word that would come out, and she just looked at me like well, where's Bubba? And you know, I went over to him as, as simplistically as I could explain it. I was, you know. I went over to him as simplistically as I could explain it. I was, you know, bubba's no longer with us. I'm sorry, daddy did everything he could. If Daddy could have brought him home, he would have, you know, bubba's in heaven now and for a while there.
Speaker 2:I don't know if she grasped the concept, but after a short period she would have just random like, like she would just wail, crying, and we took that as the grief was hitting her that you know her brother's not coming back. And even still, for the longest time I felt like that she blamed me or hated me for it, because I was always the one that went there and stayed there and came back with him and I mean I didn't take offense to it, that's all she knew and so that was kind of how she understood it and took it. And even still now, to this day, the urn that we have for him sits on the table right next to her. So I tell her all the time I'll go girl, you're not going to understand this, but Bubba is literally sitting right next to you the entire time, like we have a couch. She sits on, that's kind of her couch, and I'll go. Bubba's literally right next to you and over time I think she kind of gets some comfort in that, even though she may not completely grasp that concept.
Speaker 1:So how old is your daughter now?
Speaker 2:She will be 16 this year.
Speaker 1:And that's a lot to process for any family. Certainly, now that we've gotten those details and again thank you so much for being willing to share those I would like to talk about the grief that you experienced. On this show. I've had a lot of men, I've had a lot of women, but what really intrigues me about this particular interview is that we're going to discuss grief from the male perspective, because that was my perspective growing up. Anytime anything went wrong. It's how I dealt with the loss of my dad. Even though our relationship was very complicated, there's still grief with everything. So I mean, I know my personal experience from the male perspective.
Speaker 1:It's something that I feel really needs to have a lot of attention, because growing up, I don't think that we as men were really given the opportunity to express our feelings, to express grief or emotions. It isn't that we absolutely weren't given, but more often than not you know I was. How old are you? I am 47. Okay, so I'm a year older than you, so we grew up basically at the same time.
Speaker 1:When I was growing up, for boys it was. You don't need to worry about that. You don't need to worry about feelings and emotions. It was always just something that was perceived to be left to the women to deal with. I don't know why that was the mindset back in the 80s, but it was yep. So all right, fine, we won't talk about anything and therefore we're gonna grow up fucked up because we don't know how to process our feelings. Yep, after the loss of your son, uh, son, tell me how you processed your grief Once everything was done, once he was cremated, once you had him back home and, as you've already discussed having to get your daughter through this situation. You still need time to grieve, obviously for you and for your wife, and I know that your wife has her story, but I would love to hear you tell me your story about how you grieved and how you have gotten through it. It might still be ongoing, but, whatever it is, I would love to hear about it.
Speaker 2:Well, I'll backtrack just a tad in the sense of on the actual day, in the moment after he was pronounced and like the reality hit me. Moment after he was pronounced and like the reality hit me, I obviously had a moment in the room and I regained my composure and I immediately started to compartmentalize. Being a parent of two special needs kids, with everything that you have to go through, at least from my perspective, you've got to learn. Well, I'll deal with this emotion or this issue later. I've got to deal with what's in front of me. And so, as it relates to emotion in the moment, whereas most people probably bawling and falling to the floor and all that, I had a moment. I regained composure. Like the care team came in and literally my first response, two minutes after he had been pronounced, was this is going to sound cold and callous and I don't mean for it to be, but I point to my son and I go. I'll deal with this in a minute. I need to know some answers and those answers will help me get through this moment, and it was a lot of. What are the next steps? How do I get like a funeral home to contact you? Who do they need to contact that of stuff, and I was just like, right now, the thing that will help me the most is information, so that I know. So I know what to do next, because I want to get him home per se.
Speaker 2:So after we did that and you know, the first time emotion really hit me was we got home. You know, I, after I, after he had passed, I had to take all of my son's cut off clothing from that room, put it on his empty wheelchair, wheel it through the hospital, and my wife and I drove home silently for 65 miles to our house. It was the longest ride I think we've ever had. So we get in here in the room, my man, you can see Zach on the wall in the back. This is his had. So we get in here in the room, my man, you can see Zach on the wall in the back. This is his room. And I came in here and if you look where it says Zachary, that pile over there that's his wheelchair. That is where all of his cutoff clothes are. That's where I put his wheelchair two and a half years ago. It is not moved from that spot. And so when I finally did that and I turned around and looked at the bed behind me, I lost it, like everything had finally hit me.
Speaker 2:Now this was after we had been to my parents' house and saw my whole family and I had moments there where I just lost it in front of them, just because I couldn't get the words out. Or when I would start talking about it, I'd get that kind of trembly voice where I knew the dam was about to break, and so it took me the longest time to kind of get through everything that had happened. And you know, the next couple of days we went to the funeral home a couple of times and got all that process going, and then that next weekend we had the service, the viewing, and then the service, and so throughout all that time I had a lot of not all day, but I had a lot of very frequent moments through that time where I would like I'd be sitting on the couch, my laptop, looking over something, and you know I'd be watching a Facebook reel. That was a scene that dealt with maybe a funeral scene or a hospital scene or something like that, and I would just lose it because, even though it wasn't exactly, it reminded me of those moments and that's kind of how it was for six months afterwards and maybe even probably a year afterwards, where I'd get in there and I had something with and, weirdly enough, when I would watch like those reels online where they would have a family member and like a military member would come in and surprise them I don't know how that connected when I would see those would just hit me like a sledgehammer. Maybe it was the fact, the concept that they were gone for so long and they came back and you know, my son is gone but he's not coming back, so to speak, and so it was those scenarios that would hit me and it was, like a lot of people say, it was the most random things that I would see and it would just blindside me of. You know, all this emotion would start coming out.
Speaker 2:There were a lot of times where my wife and I would be sitting on the couch and relaxed and I'd be doing something on Facebook or social media and I would, just out of the blue, it would just, it would hit me and I would for five, ten minutes, just continuously, just was bawling because my son was nonverbal and so I got to learn him very well on his nonverbal cues, like I could tell something was wrong before he could ever, before he could ever even look at me to tell something was wrong. And I was the one that did all the hospital stays, all the doctor's visits, all the specialist visits. I was the one that did all the physical medical procedures. I was the one that toted around everywhere in our van. And so my wife and I both had a bond with them.
Speaker 2:But mine was significantly different just because of the amount of time and what we did together, different just because of the amount of time and what we did together. And my wife isn't upset about it and she said several times she said I'm not upset about y'all, you and he just had a different bond because of what you did together. You know, I'm by no means angry about it, it's just it is what it is. And so to deal with the loss of that and the fact that from the moment he was born I was literally in go mode 24-7, 365. And to go from constantly having things to do and constantly preparing things and doing doctor's visits and hospital stays to nothing, that was a big shock to me as well, because of the two of my kids he was the more medically fragile.
Speaker 2:Yes, my daughter has issues, but it was my son that was always in the hospital, right, and you know, I started off with, like probably 99% of men. I got really angry about it, and not towards my family, it was more of an internal anger about it that, you know, this wasn't even though he had a chronic illness and even though it was always kind of in the back of my brain that it could happen. It was nothing I ever thought ever would happen, at least not the way it did. And so I was internally angry about that and for the longest time afterwards, because I was in the ER when they were working on them the entire time, watching the whole process like CPR and shocking them back to life and having them pronounce. You know, I later realized, probably to this day, I still have PTSD from it, just because I sat there and from five feet away, watched the entire process the entire hour, that they were working on them, doing it, and so I was dealing with that on top of things.
Speaker 2:And then just you know I'm sure you know the stages of grief as well as anybody you know, for the longest time, even probably to this day I go the stages of grief are important but, for lack of better words, in my opinion the stages of grief are crap. I mean, yes, you deal with all of them, but the way it's presented is it's linear. You go through this one, you're you go, but that's not it. I mean it's almost like you're in a pool, it's got a whirl pool and at any point in time you're at specific points in the pool and one point is anger and one point is sadness and one point you know that kind of thing and so it. Those stages are very fluid and at any point in time you can deal with them and you could deal with one more so than the other, a lot more than the other.
Speaker 2:And you know I dealt with a lot of grief. I mean a lot of anger associated with the grief I dealt with for the longest time, a lot of sorrow from it and physically sorrow I dealt with. I mean I had all the signs like the. Not dealt with sleeping issues before, but the sleepless nights I dealt with the chest pains associated with just all the stress and pressure, the constant fatigue, the mental. You know I was was always. I was so clouded in judgment and even to this day I kind of the I call it kind of life numbness where instead of living life, you're just kind of going through life going through the motions and yeah, not really even remembering a lot of what's going on, sometimes not even aware of a lot of what's going on, sometimes not even aware of a lot of what's going on.
Speaker 1:You're just, you're doing it. You have to get out of bed, you have to get dressed, you have to do this, you have to do that, you have to. In your case, you still have to take care of your daughter, but it's it's almost like it isn't really living at that point. It's at least for a little while. It's just like you said, getting through it.
Speaker 2:It is and I still have my moments with it now. But a lot of what I'm doing with Letters to Zachary and the grief community has kind of helped me get out of that, although I do have days here and there where I just I don't want to get out of bed. I don't want to. You know, I don't really want to do anything. I don't really want to interact with folks, that kind of bed I don't want to. You know, I don't really want to do anything. I don't really want to interact with folks, that kind of thing. But I've certainly gotten better about it, although, like you know as well as I do that grief is a lifelong process and you're just going to have moments where that hits you.
Speaker 1:Grief is not linear. There is no singular way through grief. There's no singular book or article or anything. Yes, there are the stages of grief and, as you said, they're bullshit. They're not entirely bullshit, they're just to to say that this is going to happen, like it's going to happen here, first and then this and then, and that's the order. That's what's bullshit. Bullshit about it? Because the steps don't go in order and, by the way, you don't complete a step of grief necessarily. You can be in the middle of one of the steps and you might end up going backwards. It happens. There's no way to control it. Everybody's situation is different. Grief is absolutely not linear. There is no timeline, no.
Speaker 1:One of the things that I think is the biggest crock of shit in this country is how you get three days to five days of bereavement time from your job. That's an absolute pile of horseshit. We don't deal with grief on a corporate level, on a business level, nearly the way that we should. Business level, nearly the way that we should. For anybody to lose a parent or a sibling or a child, regardless of the circumstances, whether it was expected, unexpected, regardless of the circumstances, the fact that we should be expected to basically be done and be able to go back to work three days later or five days later because I know the time amount varies from companies and industries. Even if it's five days, no, the answer is absolutely not. How can anybody lose a child or a parent or a sibling and a week later be ready to all? Right, I'm good, let's go back to work? Yep, that is something that I will never understand.
Speaker 1:Mental health awareness, just overall mental health conditioning, is not addressed nearly strongly enough in this country for anyone, for men, for women, for adults, for children, for elderly folks. It's just not. And look, I get that. Everybody's grief is individual and the grief that you had doesn't necessarily affect the entire world, because the simple truth is most people in this country don't know you, so they're you know. What happens to them or what happens to you doesn't necessarily happen to them, and the same goes for any of their grief or my grief or anything. It doesn't affect everybody.
Speaker 1:So of course I can understand how business will say well, we can't just stop in place and not do anything until this person's ready to come back. I get that, but still the tools to help that person get through it once they get back into the professional environment are just not there. It really does seem like it's more of all right. Well, sorry, you had your time, but we need to move forward. We've got to keep working and we need you to get on board. And I'm not saying that's what you should have done or your wife should have done, but that's just seems to be the expectation.
Speaker 1:And sure, most jobs are willing to give a little bit of time, but not everybody's grief is processed in a few days or in a week, or in a month or even in a year. Sorry, I know that was a little bit of a rant, but it's something that we have addressed on the show in many interviews about how the timeline, the expected timeline and the fact that grief is not linear. It's something that we've talked about a lot and I appreciate you saying that once again, because it is absolutely true. I'd love to talk about Letters to Zachary. Please tell everybody what it is, how you started it and what your mission is with Letters to Zachary.
Speaker 2:Okay, letters to Zachary is a grief community. It's grief experience through the male eyes which would be mine. I learned really quickly once I started this grief journey that there weren't a ton of men out there willing to express grief, emotion or emotion in general. So what had happened was my son had passed away. We got through all the funeral services and that kind of thing and I've always been a proponent of counseling or therapy and I started seeing my counselor again and I told her everything that was going on.
Speaker 2:And probably about the fifth or sixth visit after everything had happened, she looks at me one day when we're in a session and goes have you ever thought about journaling? And honestly the ironic answer is I went you know, I don't know if I'm that great at writing or journaling, I don't really know if that's kind of my thing. And so she looks at me and goes we'll kind of keep that on the back burner. She said you don't necessarily have to do it right now. She said even if you write it personally and don't show it to anybody, it's your, you can get it out. So it's not sitting on you. And she said if you really want to, she said you could print it out and burn it, and then that could be kind of cathartic. She said you don't necessarily have to show it to anybody and I said okay, and so she gave me that idea and that idea literally sat on the back burner probably eight or nine months it was a long time and during that time, as I've always been a researcher, I got on Facebook and, as we all know, facebook has a group for everything. I found a grief group that was parents who had lost a special needs child, which I was actually surprised I found, because that's such a specified group that I didn't think there would be any out there. And so I got in that group and, like a lot of groups whether it's emotion related or along this aspect, typically it's 95% women, about 5% men, and of that 5% there might be half a percentage point that actually are regular in there, if that. So I got in there and I introduced myself and I got to know the admin very well and in fact I know her so well now at this point that I'm admitting the group with her. And I got to know the admin very well and in fact I know her so well now at this point that I'm admitting the group with her and I got to know her really well. And so, after being in there for a period of time, I said hey, do you mind if I post one of my journal entries? And she goes sure, we'd love it. We get so few men willing to want to share stuff like that, bring it on. Want to share stuff like that, bring it on.
Speaker 2:And so a couple of days went by and I looked at one of the letters I'd written in standard letter form. I decided I was going to share it Now. Before I shared it online, I went I have to prepare myself for I may get a good response, but I may get a negative response. And am I in the mental space right now to be able to handle a negative response? And you know people may go well who would give a negative response to emotion related to grief, and I would tell people you'd be amazed online what people complain about. And so I finally, just in my typical fashion, I went screw it, I'm going to. I'm going to post it, no matter. In my typical fashion, I went screw it, I'm going to post it, no matter.
Speaker 2:I posted in the group and almost immediately I get this huge response from a lot of women mothers, daughters, girlfriends, that kind of thing. It was very positive. And again, I'm not real great about promoting myself, although I've had to learn to do it with all this letters to Zachary stuff. I had several women go. This is wonderful. I had one woman go. I have never, ever, told anybody exactly how I felt from the inside and you have hit the nail on the head, word for word, exactly how I feel, and I said well, I appreciate it. I said this is inspired by my son and I'm glad that it resonates with you. So I got that big response and for about once a week for the next several weeks I did and I was getting the same kind of response.
Speaker 2:And so finally, after about the sixth or seventh time, I went you know, maybe I have something here and it was from that and during this time, like the admin and several of the women that were in there said, hey, have you ever thought about doing a podcast? And at the time I was just like I don't know if I have the brain space for that right now, just because in that moment I was a little under a year from when he had passed, and I was just like I don't know if I have what it takes. And so they said, well, okay, where have you, have you thought about writing a book? And at that time I went I don't know if I have enough material to even start a book, let alone finish one. Now I've got a two, two and a half inch binder full of stuff that at some point I may do that Okay. And it said you know, I don't know if I have enough material.
Speaker 2:And so we went through several kind of different examples of what I could do and finally someone said, well, have you ever thought about doing kind of a Facebook page as kind of a blogger? And I went I thought, huh, and they said, if anything, you could copy and paste what you have, and you wouldn't necessarily be creating stuff, you'd already post what you have. And I thought, well, that's not a bad idea which you have. And I thought, well, that's not a bad idea. So I created letters to Zachary and, like any page, you know, I had about 10 or 20 followers. You know, typical family, friends, coworkers, that kind of thing.
Speaker 2:And I was kind of sitting at about 20 followers and just one day in my brain I went you know what I need to. If I really want to make this something, I need to reach out to some folks. And so one day I got on a kick and I started looking up people that I considered kind of big names in the grief community and I literally emailed all of them and I said, hey, my name is so-and-so, I've created this grief page. I feel like I've got something here. I've only got about 10 or 20 followers. I said but is there any way you can kind of give me tips of things that have worked for you and things that maybe I should steer clear from to kind of help me get this going? And literally all of them were phenomenal. They were just like, well, if you're going to write a book, you're going to want to have a website so that when you do get that book out, you can promote it and sell it from there, and that kind of thing. If you're wanting to do podcasting, you want to do A, b and C. If you're wanting to do you know this other thing D, e and F, that kind of thing. They were all great.
Speaker 2:And I mean I had people that had just a couple hundred followers too. I mean I had people that had just a couple hundred followers to. I had one lady that had a million and a half followers. That came back and said sure, here's a list of things that kind of worked for me, here's the things that didn't work for me. It just depends on the direction you want to go. And so from that point forward, when I started doing that, I started getting followers and I started getting some momentum.
Speaker 2:And initially the page was specifically for men, and people always laugh that the ultimate beginning reason why I started this page was honestly out of spite, just because I couldn't find any men were experiencing something similar to me and I wanted to cater to that audience. But after enough time of doing that, I went you know what, if I want a really big following, I need to kind of open it up a little more. So I'm still catering to men, but the next evolution of it was I'm going to cater to men, but now I'm going to open it up to people that have lost a loved one, whether a parent, people that have lost a loved one, whether a parent, a spouse, a sibling, a child, you name it. It's opened up to them. And so that created kind of some more buzz for it and I got some more followers.
Speaker 2:And then now the third kind of evolution where I'm currently sitting at is I went, I'm going to open it up specifically to women as well, especially for those women that want to kind of have an insight of what it's like to be a man, to grieve and have emotion, because in this whole time I still kind of consistently get well, we lost our son or daughter, we lost so-and-so six months a year ago. My husband's not opening up. What can I do to help them to open up? And I go well, I've got 10 things that I think that can help you create an environment for them to feel safe to open up. Will they?
Speaker 2:I don't know, that's individually based they. You know, if I were given these scenarios, I would most likely feel comfortable to open up. Not every man's the same, you know. Some are very macho, very old school, you know that kind of thing, and they may not. But this is at least a good start, and so I essentially open it up to women to kind of give them ideas from my example of what it's like for men and how they grieve, and so that's kind of where I'm at right now. It's essentially open to everybody. But I do have subgroups in there that when I see them I try to cater to them in those kind of variations of the page.
Speaker 1:How successful has the group been so far?
Speaker 2:I am now nine months from the date in which I started. I have over a thousand followers. I have representation. I have followers in 44 of the 50 US states. I have followers in 26 countries. My four biggest countries are the US, canada, england and Australia.
Speaker 2:I have a lot of little random countries that I go. Hey, when I look at them, I go. I never thought I'd get a follower from there, like Nigeria and the Philippines, and I've got random I go. Huh, that's interesting. I never.
Speaker 2:But you know, the funny thing is my father being the upfront person that he is, when I made those comments he goes well, you know, death's not exclusive to the United States, right? And I went yes, dad, I know that. I said it just puzzles me that I'm getting these old random countries versus, you know, some of the bigger ones. And so, from there, as of today, this will be my 34th podcast episode I'm recording. And again, I say that not to brag, I say that more. If you'd have told me nine months ago I would have done 34 podcast episodes in nine months. I'd have looked at you and said you've lost your mind. There's no way that I would have done that. And it's and I mean it's honestly, some of them are grief related, but they're all different kinds of genres. I mean it's men's issues, women's podcasts, grief related, parenting, special needs all over the board is what it is. I've been very fortunate and very thankful. I've had so many people that said, hey, we'd love to hear your story. So that's kind of where I'm at this point.
Speaker 1:That's pretty impressive Nine months and you started with 10 or 20 followers and you're now well over a thousand less than a year in.
Speaker 2:Yes, that is quite remarkable.
Speaker 2:I do have that. I do have one that's I did recently. That's a TV show, if you will, although it's I don't know if it's an. It's not a network TV show, I don't believe. I think it's like an internet based TV show. But like when I messaged her and she said that she wanted me on she goes no understand, she said not only am I in the US, but I'm also in like 30 countries. And she goes, my overall reach is like 30 million people and I went, wow, that's impressive. And so I did that, which that should come out in a couple of weeks, kind of thing. And I only say that just because, again, nine months ago, if you'd have told me I was doing one, I'd have a reach of millions of people. Right, I'd have said you're crazy, there's no way that that would do that.
Speaker 2:So I've had some of those things. So I've had some of those things and, like I'm trying to break into it's ironic that I say this because essentially what I'm trying to break into is what podcasting essentially is I'm trying to get into the public speaking arena, like in person kind of thing. I know that's what podcasting is, but like I like yesterday I applied to be to get on a TEDx here in Atlanta Now. Will I get on there, I don't know. Like, when you go to apply for those, it says the response for us is huge. It may take a while, that kind of thing. I'm hoping to at least get at least a response back from this, even if I'm not it for them to say thank you but no thanks, kind of thing. So I'm branching out into those kind of areas for this.
Speaker 2:The other thing that I've done is I got in touch with the publisher and I'm creating a grief coloring book is what I'm creating. The idea behind that is, you know, we're of the same age, kind of the Gen X generation. Several years ago, grief coloring books for adults got really popular and in fact I think they still are popular, and when I was, I wanted to make something tangible that I could hold in my hands, because I'm very visual. I'm very tactile as a person, the way I learn and do things. Very visual, I'm very tactile as a person, the way I learn and do things, and so I got a. I ran across a publisher online who said she was willing to work with me, and so basically what this is I've got a website that people who are grieving can go to, which they currently own, that I will own once the coloring book comes out, that you could go into and click a button on there, called community projects, and it gets you to a survey and so anybody that filled out the survey it doesn't cost them a dime, it's no financial expense to them.
Speaker 2:So what they would do, they would come in, they'd hit community project, they go to the survey and they would list out you know who they are first name, last initial, who their child was kind of, where they're from, and then they would go to the next page and they would list all these attributes about their child, maybe a few sentences, maybe a quote, things that are characteristics of their child, that reminds them of their child. They would submit all that and then the illustrators would then take all that information, compile it and make a one full page coloring book page, kind of example or logo or scenario of the information that they gave that one could color. Of that page the person could put, they could put information about their child that they wanted the world to know. There would be a living memorial to their child and an active and interactive memorial to their child that not only could they hold on to, but anybody that bought that book could see kind of a remembrance of their child to kind of create a legacy for their loved one is initially why I did it. The second reason why I did it was through this whole process I've had so many people in the grief community help me out that I wanted to give back.
Speaker 2:So the other angle that I went was I've dealt with a lot of people that have podcasts. I've dealt with a lot of people that have podcasts, websites, collaborations, foundations, you name it that have all something that they can advertise per se. So to them I would say if you would come onto this page and do this for me, it doesn't cost you anything. And then there's a part in that survey that you can then put in all of your podcast information, social media information, memorial, foundational information that you can put in there that will be put on the back of your coloring book page. That will then advertise everything about your foundation podcast you name it to anybody that buys this and it hits your direct audience. So if you have a grief foundation, anybody that buys this can look at the back page and you can have your website on there that can now draw them into your foundation to get more of a following, more, whatever it is, you provide for anybody that buys this.
Speaker 2:So, and what I tell them is the only cost to use that you're really going to have to do is buy the book. And I said, let's say the book is $25 for whatever it comes out to be. I said where on this planet can you advertise your organization for $25? Nowhere. And I said so, essentially, I'm giving you free advertisement. And I said if you want more advertisement, I said all you have to do is promote the book because you're in it. And if I promote it and you promote it and all these other collaborators promote it, think of how many more people will buy it, how much more advertisement you'll get, essentially for free, for free. And so there was that aspect.
Speaker 2:And then the last aspect of it was grief's a difficult topic for adults, but grief is even more of a difficult topic for children, and so my thought behind it was this is something as a parent can do with their child. They can put down a coloring book in front of their young child, give them something that they're familiar with. They know how to do a tangible kind of de-stressing activity that they can do, and while y'all are both coloring together, you can sit there and talk about difficult issues, while it's a stress-free environment, while you talk about them and trying to dumb the concept down, if you will, to your child while you're doing this. So it kind of creates a bonding moment and a stress-free environment to talk about difficult topics between parents and children. So those are the three reasons why I decided to do it to give back, to help and to create a scenario to help parents talk to their children and, honestly, even adults for those that like to color, if you will. And so that's kind of why I came up with it.
Speaker 2:And that coloring book will be released officially right now, august 16th, so we've got a couple more weeks. I've given you my website Letters to Zachary. It will certainly have a link on that website outside of, I'll have a link on my Facebook page and then all my other social media on there, so people will be able to get to it. So if you're someone that's interested, it will be on my website, it'll be on all my social media. I believe the publisher will sell it and and I book, like everything else, it'll be on Amazon.
Speaker 1:A couple of questions here. Is there any? I know you said there was a link to fill out to be part of that. Is that still happening?
Speaker 2:It is still on there. The publisher I'm dealing with has not hasn't told me to stop using it at this point. So it's letters to to zachary z-a-c-h-a-r-y dot com. Now, anybody that goes to it, it's going to redirect you to the belmont city press and the only the only reason for is is I don't own letters to Zachary yet, but from the day in which it is released I will buy it from her so that it will be mine. It's through them until we get, until it comes out. So anybody that may go to it, you are in the right place. Don't think you I'm directing you somewhere else. That's kind of our agreement that we had until it was released.
Speaker 1:So the reason I ask that, by the time that this episode gets dropped, it will be after the book is already published. I'm very interested in being a part of this project and also, once this book goes for sale. I have a section on my website, on OurDeadDadscom, that I'm promoting books, I'm promoting podcasts and I'm promoting other basically, we call them friends of the podcast Gotcha A lot of people that have helped me along the way to get to the point where I'm at now. I absolutely want to promote this book once it is available, if you can give me, once it's done, whatever day the book goes on sale.
Speaker 1:If you can send me the link, whether it's Amazon or Barnes and Noble or wherever it may be that the book is for sale, and if there are multiple links, send me multiple links, that's fine, certainly, but I absolutely want to feature the book on the website, if that's okay with you.
Speaker 2:Oh, I would love for you to At this point. I'm honestly still waiting on cover art at this point, I mean. But we're about a month out at this point and, as of the last time I talked to her, she said she had 28 entries and which would mean about 28 pages. And so she she said, at least for this one she goes. We could do up to about 50 pages at this point. She said, if it got over more than that, she said we could certainly do another one, if you really want to do another one. And I said, well, let's see how this one goes. And I haven't talked to her in about a week and a couple of weeks, so I need to message her today and kind of go well, where are we at? Because I've got people that would like to promote it and if we don't have space, I'd hate to send them there and they go. Sorry, you can't do that.
Speaker 1:I really appreciate you allowing me the opportunity to do that and to be part of this mission.
Speaker 2:Certainly.
Speaker 1:So it seems like you've taken something that ended up being really tragic and turning it into something beautiful in a tribute to your son and to also help so many other people. I imagine this has been, in a way, therapeutic for you as well.
Speaker 2:Yes, it's been very cathartic. In fact my wife last week said to me you may not think you've changed a whole lot, but for me, from the outside looking in, there's been a huge difference.
Speaker 1:Do you notice it yourself? I do. I know you said earlier that you are kind of the last person, that one that is willing to give yourself credit.
Speaker 2:I do, and I say that in the sense of you know, the standard example when people talk about grief is it's like waves in an ocean, and initially, in the first part, you're constantly being battered by waves of grief and then the farther out you get, the farther the waves get. In that sense, yes, I still have moments here and there. Am I as outwardly emotional, as frequently, as I used to be? No, I'm not even close to what I, you know, three months, six months, nine months out, that kind of thing. I mean. I still have my again, like all of us.
Speaker 2:I still have my days, but my, I I've seen a big turnaround in that, but the biggest issues that I deal with right now are still. I have a lot of days where I just feel numb. You know, I like, like through my TikTok account, my letters to Zachary TikTok account, one of the videos I've done a couple of times has been that. You know I live with a dull sense of melancholy all the time. It's always in the, it's always in the background, it's never, it's not always on the surface. It does come up, but I always know it's there on the surface. It does come up, but I always know it's there and I have just accepted the fact that it will always be there just because of being on the grief journey. But to say that I'm better than what I was in the beginning yeah, it's probably 180 degrees.
Speaker 1:The grief journey is, as we've already discussed, different for everybody. I don't know that it's fair to say it's better or worse or more intense or less intense for different for everybody. I don't know that it's fair to say it's better or worse or more intense or less intense for men or for women. Again, you have the male perspective, I have the male perspective. I know personally my communication abilities when I was younger and even to some degree as I've gotten older. It's not always easy to talk to express your feelings. Having this podcast has definitely brought me more out of my shell. My wife will say that I'm one of the easiest people to talk to. She said early on in our relationship I'm the kind of person that can walk into a room with a hundred strangers and walk out with a hundred friends. Our relationship I'm the kind of person that can walk into a room with a hundred strangers and walk out with a hundred friends, and that's just kind of been me. When we're talking about you know, whatever, then yeah, I'm outwardly open and social and just very easy to talk to. Something like this. It's different, it's very different.
Speaker 1:My experience with my dad was not something that I really wanted to talk about. In the beginning it was not because I was trying to avoid it. Well, actually, I don't really know. Maybe I was trying to avoid it, I think in a way maybe I was. I went through what we had to go through when he passed. We had the funeral, we moved on and again, my dad had health issues for many years. He was just not the best person, not the easiest person to get along with, married and divorced five times. I'm the oldest of his seven children, so there was a lot of shit there. But once it was all done, a few months after the fact, when I was just trying to basically get back to life, I didn't really have the feelings of, you know, I missed him and I was heartbroken. I didn't really have a lot of that just because of the relationship we had. And yet a few months out, I was finding that I was dealing with anger toward him because of the person he was, because of the way he treated his children, his ex-wives, and that's what ultimately got me into therapy, what was also kind of my wife nudging me, saying you need to talk to somebody, and six months later, after weekly sessions, I was in a much better place. And so I think that therapy is necessary for everybody at one point or another, and for different reasons.
Speaker 1:I really do believe that everybody can benefit from therapy. It doesn't just have to be about grief and loss and the loss of a family member or a friend. There can be so much shit going on in this world and you can really benefit from talking to somebody. A lot of us don't want to talk. Don't think that we should talk Again.
Speaker 1:We've talked already about this with men feeling we're, you know, we're macho and we have to put this persona on display, that, uh, you know, we can handle anything. That's crap. Nobody can handle anything. I. I think it's good to, I think it's great to have a platform like you do have this group letters to zachary, where you are inviting initially just men in, but now you have opened it up to women. Same thing with the podcast, I think.
Speaker 1:Initially I thought that this was going to be geared more toward men, and I'm realizing it should not be, because grief isn't something that's just experienced by men, even though I am looking to explore the male dynamic and the male perspective.
Speaker 1:It can't just be limited, there cannot be limits to this.
Speaker 1:It has to be opened up to everybody and just in the short time that I've been doing this, even at this point, there are a lot of interviews that have not been published that I've already conducted and the things that people have opened up to me about are they've really just made my perspective grow a lot in this time and I'm so honored to have everybody that I've had a chance to talk to and I hope that just continues and I hope that Letters to Zachary continues to grow and to get so much recognition.
Speaker 1:Also, the show that you're going to be on the internet TV show. When that gets published, when that goes live, please share the link with me to that show, because I also want to include that on your episode page. Anything that we can do to get this out there I want to do. I want to be able to help you and help your mission to help Letters to Zachary. Again, I mean your audience is significantly bigger than mine at this point because I've only been doing this for a month, but the way that I see it is over time. I hope that this podcast is going to grow.
Speaker 2:Certainly.
Speaker 1:And I hope that people will start from the beginning, will hear all of the people that I've spoken with, hear all of the stories and, when they come across something like Letters to Zachary, go to your website, go to your Facebook page, see what this is about and, if it's not a situation that they personally can relate to, I know that they're going to know somebody who can, and I hope that they either join your page or recommend your page, because there are so many invaluable resources available and I think this is one of them.
Speaker 1:I love what you're doing, and my wife and I don't have children, so we're never going to be directly in a situation where we're going to ever have the opportunity to experience what you and your wife have experienced. That doesn't mean we can't help each other out, and I want everyone to know who listens to this podcast, the incredible work that you're doing, and to visit your website, to visit your Facebook page, to see what this is about, to share with anybody that they know who has been in this situation, who have lost a child, and whether it's a child with special needs or not. There are so many levels of grief and I want everyone to be able to work with you, be part of your page and help spread your word Well thank you.
Speaker 2:I certainly appreciate it Ultimately. In the beginning this was just a way just to get things out so it just wouldn't sit on top of me. What I've learned through just nine months is the fact that there's a need out there. Months is the fact that there's a need out there. And if you know, I appreciate all the followers and all, but at the end of the day I have to have the content there for people to resonate with people, otherwise I'm not going to have the following and I have learned just through. I mean there could be a thousand reasons why people follow the pages that I've got. I mean it could be the simple fact that I'm a man, it could be the fact that I lost a child, or maybe the special needs world, or it could just be my outlook on things.
Speaker 2:I've had a lot of people say you know, you have an oddly weird knack for making difficult topics with very simplistic analogies and I said well, you know I'm in education, so my motto is, if I can, a lot of people try to teach it to you like you're a kindergartner, and if you can understand, at that point you can understand anything. And you know, that's kind of the outlook I have from there. You know this started with just men, but ultimately, kind of in the vein of like what my father told me, grief is not exclusive to just men, or women, you know, or children or parents, or whatever. So there's a need out there for everybody. And lastly, you know from a man's perspective, there's a lot of men that they won't do anything until they see an example of someone doing it.
Speaker 2:And you know, the longest time ago I said, you know, instead of me complaining about these things, why don't I do something about it? So I just tell people am I perfect at it? Am I always doing the greatest things at it? Probably not, but at least I'm out there going hey, it's okay to do this, it's okay to open up, it's okay to express yourself. You can come to my page or message me and there's no judgment here, I'm not going to throw it back in your face, I'm not going to. Probably a lot of it I will have experienced, you know. So you know I've been with the. A phrase from our youth is I've been there, done that, bought the t-shirt. So you know, that's kind of the whole concept of why all of this started.
Speaker 1:You don't have to be perfect at it, you don't have to be the resident expert in what you're talking about. You just have to be willing to talk about it. And you are. And, as you said, a lot of men are not willing to talk about anything, even once it hits them in the face. I think that's a big part of why I wanted to.
Speaker 1:Well, I know that is a big part of why I started this podcast, because I kind of want to attract two different groups the people who are willing to talk about what they've been through, and the people who have a ton of shit built up that they've been trying to get through or they've been trying to process but really don't know how to start or really haven't started. So I kind of want to invite that crowd into this podcast just to listen, just to say, look, you're not alone, you have gone through shit, we have all gone through shit. Nobody's is better or worse or more important or less important. It's just a matter of we are all here to deal with grief together. So basically, to that second group of people I say come on in, just listen. If this isn't for you, I totally understand it. Thank you for trying.
Speaker 1:And if it is for you, just listen for a while, just hear some of the stories that people are sharing and know that, while your particular story may be a one of a story, grief isn't unique to anyone. We all go through it and that's why I believe a platform like this, like what I'm doing, like what you're doing, is valuable to be out there, because everybody that you and I have known, and everybody that you and I have not known, all experience grief. So I love that we are putting this out there and specifically. So I love that we are putting this out there and specifically, I love that you are putting yourself out there, that you are telling your story, that you are making yourself vulnerable and you're willing to do this for the greater good of helping so many others.
Speaker 2:So thank you so much for doing that well, thank you for having me on, I appreciate it absolutely completely my honor and pleasure.
Speaker 1:I think that's probably a good stopping point for the interview and I'm also going to bring up the last part of the show, which is to throw a bunch of random questions your way. We're going to do this to as as I do with every other interview, to kind of end on a lighter note, to you know we've just talked about some really intense topics, and so this is just basically meant to be kind of a little bit of a cleansing session, just to be a little bit of fun for a few minutes, and at the same time, we're going to get to know some random details about you.
Speaker 1:Here we go. What makes you angry?
Speaker 2:Oh, some days there's a multitude of things that make me angry. Ignorance makes me angry, and especially when you know people. They know better, but they choose not to know better what is one of your nicknames. Honestly, I don't have any.
Speaker 1:You don't have a single one.
Speaker 2:I don't have a nickname have any.
Speaker 1:You don't have a single one I don't have a nickname Wow Okay, you're just Jason.
Speaker 2:Yeah, all right. Do you think you could win on a game show? Honestly, my wife says that I'm so blooming wordy that I probably could, and so, through her recommendation, I would say yes.
Speaker 1:Okay, I think I already know the answer to this one, but I'm going to ask anyway who inspires you? Well, probably the answer to this one, but I'm going to ask anyway who inspires you.
Speaker 2:Well, probably the answer you're expecting are my kids. I think that's one. You know. Probably a lot of people in this grief world inspire me, just for the fact that, even though they know they don't want to get up, they don't want to go to work, they don't want to, but they still get up and get out there and do what needs to be done, even though there's just this immense weight on them.
Speaker 1:That's a great answer. What is your favorite city in the US, besides the one you live in?
Speaker 2:I'm going to say Mobile, alabama, and I know it's probably a random city, but I lived there my formative years. I went to school there, I graduated high school there. I lived in Alabama for 17 years. That and the fact that mobile is about an hour each direction from a beach, and when I was younger I I took it for granted. But now that I'm up in atlanta and I'm six hours from a beach, I used to love being able to drive an hour to gulf shores and being on the gulf at any point in time during the summer. So, and plus, mobile reminds me of just my youth. When everything gets crazy around here Sometimes it's just nice to go back and remember some of that stuff. That's a great answer.
Speaker 1:I can definitely relate to the beach part. My wife and I both grew up on long Island. We were 20, 30 minutes tops away from the beach. Eight years ago we moved to just outside of Austin, texas, and it it was a whether we wanted to go to galveston, to rockport, to port aransas, to corpus christi. It was a three-hour drive, yep, and we hated it because it basically meant to go to the beach for a few hours. It was going to be a full day commitment yep, and that was a lot of the things that we loved about living in texas. That was one of our least favorite parts, and now that we moved to Tampa two years ago, we're 30 minutes away from the beach again and we love it. Do you correct other people's grammar?
Speaker 2:No, but I, silently in my head, judge them Just because I'm wordy and in recent history or recent pop culture, they've gotten to where the youth have gotten to, where they shorten specific words Instead of saying the whole word. They'll like cut it in half and like. One of the places I worked in between being a stay-at-home parent was. I worked for Chick-fil-A for a while and it was one of the old dwarf houses where they had the sit-down restaurant and one of the female servers came up to me and said something, cut a word in half. And I went. So how much time did it really save you to cut that word in half? I said you saved? What a quarter of a second. I said you can't say the whole word and she would look at me and just roll her eyes.
Speaker 1:Of course she did. Yeah, yeah, I hate that. About the younger generation I call them the AOL generation Basically starts from about my youngest sister, who was 17 years younger than me. She's 31. Anybody, from pretty much her on down Yep, the way that everything is abbreviated or shortened. Just take a little shortcut Again. How much time is it really saving you when you could just say what you need to say and be articulate and be fully understood, rather than trying to take a shortcut? I'm with you there. Do you prefer cats or dogs?
Speaker 2:Not to go middle of the road, but I like both, and the reason why I say that is when I was growing up, my parents actually breeded Himalayan cats Okay, my parents actually breeded Himalayan cats, okay. So we had that. But we also had several dogs my whole life. So I'm I like both. Personally, where I'm at now with my family, we've been looking into getting a dog. So if I had to lean a little bit one way, probably dogs okay, how tall are you?
Speaker 2:well, I'd like to say that I'm six foot, but I'm 5'11 and a half.
Speaker 1:Okay, for a long time I was six foot and I measured myself about a year ago when I came up at 5'11 and a half and that kind of irritated me. Yeah, what is your favorite store to shop at?
Speaker 2:Actually it's online. It's probably Amazon, because I can find everything I want in one spot and I don't have to leave the couch.
Speaker 1:That's right. What is the last song that you listened to?
Speaker 2:After my son passed away on my Spotify, I created like kind of songs like that reminded me of him or like concepts that like were tributes to him. And the one thing I always comment online is when people ask me what inspires me to write. And I said you're going to be surprised when I tell you the answer. And they go well, what is it? And I go. The one song I listen to most of the time when I'm writing grief-related things that are just emotion-filled is Adele's Make you Feel my Love or something like that. And they go really you as a guy and I went yeah, I said I know it's surprising, but there's just something about the wording of that song Great song.
Speaker 1:Is double dipping at a party ever acceptable?
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:Where do you live now?
Speaker 2:I am outside of Metro Atlanta Now understand that Metro Atlanta is considered 19 counties, so it's massive. I am in Noonan Georgia, which is southwest of Atlanta, so it's massive. I am in Noonan, Georgia, which is Southwest of Atlanta. It's about 30 minutes South of the airport and about 50 miles South of the center of Atlanta.
Speaker 1:Okay, if you could push a button and make everyone in the world 10% happier, but it would also place a worldwide band on all hairstyling products. Would you push it?
Speaker 2:Well, you know I'm going to say yes because you can see how much hair I have on my head. That's right. You're not using those products anyway. I mean, as long as we got combs around, I mean you can wet your hair, that's right.
Speaker 1:What word do you hate hearing?
Speaker 2:Honestly, any racial slur. You know, I know there are certain words that are culturally appropriate, like the N word, for the Black population to use, and fine. If a culture wants to use it, fine, that's up to them. But why would I want to use it? Even if they've appropriated it to use it in a positive way, it still has a negative connotation. Why would I want to use that?
Speaker 1:Very good answer. Do you ever Instagram your food? No, never, which object do you misplace or lose the most?
Speaker 2:Probably my readers my glasses Cause like I can see far and like I took them off for this because otherwise you get the glare in my glasses and it drives me crazy. But like, up close I have to have them, but far away I'm fine. So if I lose them and they're somewhat close, I'll go Close, I have to have them, but far away.
Speaker 1:I'm fine. So if I lose them and they're somewhat close, it'll drive me crazy. Understood One of my bosses the first job that I had in Texas. He probably had six or seven pairs of readers. You know they were the cheap ones that you just get them at Walgreens or CBS, but he had pairs of them everywhere he at various points during the day. He would go outside and have a cigarette, there was always a pair of them sitting out there. Not because he needed to read anything out there Well, sometimes he was looking at something on his phone, but there was always a pair out there, always at least two or three pairs on his desk. He kept one in the car. One time I passed his office and he was just looking around his desk and I said what did you lose now? And he said I lost my reading glasses. I said they're on your head. Oh, sorry about that. Thanks, good answer, though. What was your major in college?
Speaker 2:Well, I actually started off at a private liberal arts school studying religion and philosophy because I wanted to go be a youth minister in the Methodist church. However, two years into it, I decided that that wasn't really what I wanted to go be a youth minister in the Methodist church. However, two years into it, I decided that that wasn't really what I wanted to do. I transferred into the university that I graduated from and I have a degree in health and physical education K-12. And I taught elementary school physical education for almost nine years. Do you own a bicycle? Not anymore.
Speaker 1:Do you consider yourself tech savvy?
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Have you ever written a song for somebody?
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:What is your favorite type of tea?
Speaker 2:I'm in the South sweet tea.
Speaker 1:Do you enjoy running?
Speaker 2:Only if I'm being chased, and even then I've got to really question if it's worth me running.
Speaker 1:That's fair, say something in an Asian language.
Speaker 2:Well, you got me at a loss for that. I don't know anything in an Asian language.
Speaker 1:Okay, have you ever seen a kangaroo in person?
Speaker 2:I don't think I have.
Speaker 1:Would you rather lose all of your hair or gain 50% more than what you had at your peak?
Speaker 2:Well, not to get too graphic for your listeners, but even though I have no hair on my head, I have more than ample enough elsewhere, and so I don't want 50% more.
Speaker 1:Okay. Well, for the sake of this question, we'll go with just the hair on your head.
Speaker 2:No, honestly, I'm very hot natured. I have always been like I'm almost to the point of hyperhidrosis kind of issue, and so I have shaved my head for 20 years now. So again, the irony is the fact I shaved my head but yet grow a beard out.
Speaker 1:Right, so, but you don't want the hair back on your head. You're happy the way it is, okay. What is your favorite food?
Speaker 2:Oh, I could eat Mexican food every day, but then I'd be 500 pounds.
Speaker 1:Do you believe in soulmates? Yes, what time do you usually wake up? In the morning.
Speaker 2:Well, seeing as I have issues sleeping, it could be anywhere from 3.30 or 4 in the morning all the way to 7 in the morning.
Speaker 1:Okay, on a scale of 1 to 10,. How much do you enjoy garlic Nine? Who do you enjoy garlic Nine? Who do you text the most? My?
Speaker 2:wife.
Speaker 1:What is your go-to snack?
Speaker 2:Ice cream.
Speaker 1:Do you have a hidden talent?
Speaker 2:Hidden talent. I don't know if running my mouth is a talent, but I can certainly do it well.
Speaker 1:I think that's an acceptable answer. Many of us have that talent. What were you afraid of as a child?
Speaker 2:Heights, still am. Many of us have that talent. What were you afraid of as a child? Heights still I am.
Speaker 2:I tell my wife I don't know if it's heights that I'm afraid of, or falling well, I'm like I can get on roller coasters, that kind of thing, but like some of these areas that you can go where you get on the suspension bridges, that, no, you will not get in. Uh, I tell people all the time, if I were meant to be that high up in the air, I would have been born with wings born with wings.
Speaker 1:Yep, see, I love being up in the tallest buildings that you know. I've been to the empire state building the sears tower. I love that and love the view from up there, and I'm not even phased by it. Nothing bothers me about being up there. Yet I won't go on the roof of my own house and I have a single story house.
Speaker 2:Yep, I don't know, I can't explain it, because you don't have a fear of falling off the Empire State Building.
Speaker 1:Right, there's a wall and there's railings, and if you're going to fall off the Empire State Building, you're going to have to make a hell of an effort to make that happen, yep, but going up on my own roof, nope, don't want to do. Speaking of having wings, would you rather fly or have super strength?
Speaker 2:Fly just because in certain aspects of it there are people around me that are probably already think I have super strength in some areas.
Speaker 1:Okay, what is one subject that you would like to learn more about?
Speaker 2:Oh wow, woodworking. I'm fascinated by those shows and anybody that can create those, but you know it's like you watch this show and they go. Oh well, this project only take you 30 minutes, yeah, but you also have fifty thousand dollars worth of tools sitting behind you too right, yeah, when you've got the tools, then sure it's only going to take you 30 minutes.
Speaker 1:For the rest of us it's going to take us a week. Since you're the same, about the same age as I am, let's see how this question goes over Super Mario Brothers or Zelda.
Speaker 2:Oh wow. I spent many years wasted of my life playing both of those. I would probably go with Super Mario Brothers.
Speaker 1:Okay, any particular reason?
Speaker 2:Because when I got the original Nintendo, that was the first one and I got hooked on it. I played it incessantly to get through it and so, and I did the same thing with Zelda. But there was more variation to me, especially when you start learning about later on, when you start learning about all the hidden areas they had in the game, and so I just I liked it more.
Speaker 1:My brother, my youngest brother, michael and I we haven't done it in a while but we still do this where we'll just have between the two of us competitions to see who can get through the first quest of zelda the fastest, you know, with winning all the levels, getting all the main items and beating ganon. And he still hasn't beaten. He's getting close, but he still hasn't beaten me yet. Um, but both of those two games, I mean, I think zelda would probably be a little bit more of a favorite for me, but I'm with you.
Speaker 2:I've wasted many hours and days, weeks, months, years of my life playing those games um, I will say I have also wasted a lot of years and time on the atari, the calico, several of those before that. For those in the younger audience that don't know what those are I'm with you.
Speaker 1:Atari was my first game system, I think probably 1981 or 1982. My mom bought it for us. I actually have. Now. A few years ago the Super Nintendo Classic came out and actually found somebody to modify the system, get a little flash drive with a lot more games on it and there's games from I don't know all sorts of systems. It has all the games from Atari 2600, 5200, 7800, colecovision, nintendo, super Nintendo, playstation, a bunch of the original arcade games, just thousands of games, gotcha. So happy about that, I mean. I don't lately haven't played it nearly as much as I would like to or as I have in the past, but it's still nice to have it there every once in a while. What is your favorite junk food?
Speaker 2:There's actually a lot of them, but right now I'm kind of hooked on. I've got like little peanut butter pretzel bites.
Speaker 1:The little pretzel nuggets. Yeah, I love those. We frequently shop at Costco and a couple times my wife has gotten the big container you probably know it the big container of the peanut butter pretzels. And sometimes I think the last time my wife went there I said just please don't get it, because I will just devour them if they're in the house. Yep, and trying to semi-behave, so that's one less thing that I have to tempt me with. Last question for you what motivates you the most?
Speaker 2:I have an internal drive and it's not one thing in specific, but it's if I'm motivated to do some. But if I'm motivated to do something, I'm like a thousand percent, and if it's something that I can finish in a day, I won't stop until it's done. When we moved into this house, my wife was working and we moved out of a condo into this house and all the little stuff. I literally did that entire condo in one day, making like eight trips back and forth just to get it in the house. And then the next day when, like, the movers brought the big stuff, my wife looked at me and she said you're not going to stop to everything's in its place, are you? And I went no, I am not Now, granted. When I stopped, I dropped. When I stopped, I dropped but it was done.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's some impressive drive. Jason, I can't thank you enough for your time today, for sharing everything that you've shared, for telling us about Letters to Zachary, for telling us about your journey through your grief, which, as you've said, is still ongoing, and that it's incredible that you're willing to talk about this because, again, a lot of people men and women, a lot of folks are just not willing to go there and to make themselves vulnerable. And the fact that you were willing to talk about this and that you have another cause, that you have letters to Zachary and everybody else that you're working with on your own to contact other people, to work with other people that have been dealing with grief, it's truly inspiring and thank you again for so much for sharing all of that with us.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you.
Speaker 2:You know, ultimately, like a lot of us in this community, as long as I can help at least one person, then it was worthwhile.
Speaker 2:You know I'm my drive outside of helping people is the fact that I wanted to create a legacy in my son's name is what the biggest drive was outside of helping people. So that's one of the reasons why I'm consistently doing everything that I'm doing in his name as well as helping other people. So I mean, I've come across a lot of people Again, I've done a lot of media on it and who knows how many thousands of people have seen the things I've currently done and who will see what I'm doing now and in future endeavors. So as long as people can see that there is someone out there that I may not experience exactly what you're doing, but I mean I get it. And so for those of us in the grief community, that's all we really want is to understand that someone out there understands, even if it's just one person, and for most of us, that one person that gets it is usually not family, it's usually some stranger on the internet.
Speaker 1:Unfortunately, a lot of times people are too preoccupied with what they've already got going on, and sometimes family. They're just not the right people to talk to.
Speaker 2:Certainly.
Speaker 1:It doesn't mean that they don't want to, but sometimes you really do just need somebody who's a complete outsider to speak with or to get their perspective or, as you said, to fully grasp what it is that you're dealing with and what you're trying to process Again for anybody listening. Go to letterstozacharycom. Find Letters to Zachary on Facebook. If you know anybody who can benefit from being part of this community, please either yourself join the pages or encourage somebody else to do it. Encourage them to reach out to Jason. I'm sure, jason, you would have no problem having a conversation with anybody.
Speaker 2:No, bring it on Absolutely.
Speaker 1:And, once again, by the time that this episode is released hopefully the book will be released as well You'll be able to go to ourdeaddadscom, go to the recommended books tab and you will be able to find the link or, if there are multiple links, whatever links that, jason, that you can provide me with. They will be on the page and definitely encourage you to pick up the book Once it's available for purchase. I know that I will be buying a copy myself and I hope that everybody else will as well. So again, thank you so much for that.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you so much. We'll keep in touch.
Speaker 1:We sure will Definitely talk soon. Have a great day. The grief community is so much bigger than most people realize. It's all inclusive, there's no judgment and there's room for everybody, whether you have faced the loss of a parent, a sibling, a child, a friend or anyone else who has held a special place in your heart. As we've said a million times on this show. Just start the conversation. Jason didn't know what to do when he and his wife first lost their son, zachary, and when he realized that there weren't a lot of resources for grieving men, he made a group, he talked to people, he began journaling and ultimately used those writings as the foundation of a book to honor his son's memory. Aside from processing his own grief, jason is a passionate and dedicated presence in the grief community and is ready to help anyone who has faced their own loss and doesn't know how to move through that grief, which is something that he himself still deals with on a daily basis. I'm honored to have had Jason on the show and I know that this will not be the last time that you hear him on Our Dead Dads If you have a story of grief and loss to share and might want to be considered as a future guest on Our Dead Dads.
Speaker 1:Go to OurDeadDadscom, go to the Contact Us link and then select Be a Guest. Fill out the form, send it in and you just might be able to tell your story and carry on this mission of helping ourselves and so many others. Again, there are no rules to navigating grief and there's no timeline for doing it either. Everybody needs to go at their own pace, but the most important thing is taking the first step. Whether you want to tell your own story or you just want to listen to others tell their stories, the most important thing to understand is that no one is alone in grief or should ever feel like they don't have someone who will talk or listen to you.
Speaker 1:Here at Our Dead Dads, within the safe space of this community, you always have both. Thank you for listening, and join me next week when I am joined by Mel Mosier. Mel is also a podcaster. She's an author and has been a huge player in the mental health world for years. Mel will sit down with me to tell her grief story, which is something that she has never done publicly until now, saying that it's an honor that she chose this show as the platform to reveal the things that she talks about is a huge understatement and you will not want to miss this conversation. Make sure you're following Our Dead Dads on your favorite podcast streaming platform, because you will not want to miss this episode or any other upcoming episode. This is Our Dead Dads, where we are changing the world one damaged soul at a time. See you next time.